With smartphones and some wonderful apps these days, it is fairly easy to get obsessed, and I am not talking about Candy Crush. I am talking about Data Crunching.
Heaps of it.
Last month, I knew things had got out of hand. Instead of hitting the town for a friend's birthday, I stayed at home and walked back and forth across my living room hoping the little exercise would make me feel less guilty about the amount of eating-out I have been doing. It was probably for the best that I didn't go out for dinner and cocktails anyway, because according to the wonderful Account Tracker app that keep stabs on my finances, I am veering dangerously close to busting my monthly budget.
And don't even go there with the ingenious Drinks Tracker, an app that racks up all the units I drink in a week. It is making me feel like a really really bad person for pouring a third glass of wine on a Friday night. I have had a boozy month and the bar chart on my app is alarmingly littered with red exclamation marks. And so I logged on to Optimism, my Happiness Tracker and downgraded my mood from an eight to a fiver!
Are you lured? If so, here's a list of useful quantified-self apps for your reference. I have pretty much been there done that and at the end of the day, I know data does not matter, it is what I mine from it that does. It is like those TV programmes about obese people when they lay out all the food they have eaten in a week and it really shocks them. I have hence become more self conscious of what I do, eat and drink, which is very empowering indeed.
I may have started walking more and eating, drinking, spending less, but frankly, I am ready to ditch my Nike Fuelband for now. Stop counting and just start living and hopefully, back on jogging (no, I meant blogging) a bit more frequently.
